Choose Joy

            The week after Thanksgiving feels like catch up. Our families and friends return to their homes. We start back to work. Our kids readjust after the many treats and sweets last week. We feel refreshed, tired, overwhelmed, sad, anxious, lonely, and at peace. So many emotions and so many things to do. With Thanksgiving at a close, we want to remember to remain thankful in all circumstances. How can one do that despite the laundry list of things listed above? Answer: Choose Joy.

            One of the best ways to fight the holiday blues is by choosing joy. This is not something that the Lord thought would be easy when He told us to “rejoice always,” but He did tell us how. Simply that. Rejoice always. Our circumstances do not have to impact our decisions. This means that we can decide and choose to rejoice just as commanded. We can choose to list off all the ways we are thankful. We can choose to worship and praise the Lord. We can choose to say “thank you, Lord, for allowing us to feel deeply and understand grief.” We can rejoice in the goodness of God because He sees us. He loves us.

            When you start to feel the enemy tempting you with negativity, look up. Look to Jesus and tell Him. Say “Lord, right know I feel ____. I want to choose joy, and it is hard. But I commit to choosing joy. Please fill me with your Spirit and help me rejoice always. Please show me all the beautiful things around me. Please fill me with gratitude. Please help me obey your command to rejoice always. Thank you for listening when I talk to you and for helping me when I ask for it. Amen”

            When we choose joy, we become thankful. When we become thankful, we choose joy. What a beautiful cycle to fall into. What a gift.

Written By: Elizabeth Keith

AmazingGrace.Life is 8!

This is our 8th year of AmazingGrace.Life, and what a year it has been! Our number one goal at AGL is to share the Gospel with everyone and anyone who will listen. One of our big ways of doing this is by connecting people to the Gospel through our website www.amazinggrace.life. We have had the privilege of sharing the gospel with over 2 million people on our website this year alone. We have had over 39000 people actively accept Jesus and share their faith transformation with us. We have had over 3500 people chat with JesusCares.com after finding our website and needing resources or help answering questions. Over 5000 people read through answers to their life-altering, hard questions on our website, and more than 10000 people sought help in how to follow god. People really felt a pull to start that relationship with Jesus this year and more than 52000 people read about ‘6 ways to follow God in their day to day life’. The Lord is moving and using AGL to help spread His Good News! 

In addition to these amazing ways the Lord has been moving, we have had the privilege of sending our Amazing Grace books and Gospel of John books all across the world. Each year we set out to share the Gospel with remote parts of the world. This year we sent over 3000 books to international locations in order to help fulfill that vision. What a gift it is to share the Gospel with the most remote places. Also, we were able to give to various relief projects that supported areas of conflict or natural disaster including Maui, Pakistan, and Africa. The Lord is gracious and good, so we give Him all the glory as He used this ministry to provide support internationally. 

We truly cannot praise the Lord enough for His faithfulness throughout this year. He has allowed us to do more than we hoped. He is moving and powerful, and we get to be a part of His Kingdom!

What is the Gospel?

What exactly do Christians mean when they talk about the “gospel of Jesus Christ”? Since the word “gospel” means “good news,” when Christians talk about the gospel, they’re simply telling the good news about Jesus! It’s a message from God saying, “Good news! Here is how you can be saved from my judgment!” That’s an announcement you can’t afford to ignore.

Why Is the Gospel Good News?

So, what is the good news about Jesus Christ?

Since the earliest Christians announced the good news about Jesus, it has been organized around these questions:

1. Who made us, and to whom are we accountable?

2. What is our problem?

3. What is God’s solution to our problem?

4. How can I be included in his solution?

Christians through the centuries since Christ have answered those questions with the same truth from the Bible.

1. We are accountable to God.

2. Our problem is our sin against him.

3. God’s solution is salvation through Jesus Christ.

4. We come to be included in that salvation by faith and repentance.

Let’s summarize those points like this: God, Mankind, Jesus Christ, and Our Response.

God

The first thing to know about the good news of Jesus is that “in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). Everything starts from that point, so if you get that point wrong then everything else that follows will be wrong. Because God created everything—including us—he has the right to tell us how to live. You have to understand that in order to understand the good news about Jesus. To understand just how glorious and life-giving the gospel of Jesus Christ is, we have to understand that God is also holy and righteous. He is determined never to ignore or tolerate sin. Including ours!

Mankind

When God created the first human beings, Adam and Eve, he intended for them to live under his righteous rule in perfect joy—obeying him and living in fellowship with him. When Adam disobeyed God, though, and ate the one fruit that God had told him not to eat, that fellowship with God was broken. Moreover, Adam and Eve had declared rebellion against God. They were denying his authority over their lives.

It’s not just Adam and Eve who are guilty of sin. The Bible says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). Sin is the rejection of God himself and his authority over those to whom he gives life.

Once you understand sin in that light, you begin to understand why “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). That’s not just physical death, but spiritual death, a forceful separating of our sinful, rebellious selves from the presence of God forever. The Bible teaches that the final destiny for unbelieving sinners is eternal, active judgment in a place called “hell.”

But . . .

Jesus Christ

The word “Christ” means “anointed one,” referring to anointing a king with oil when he is crowned. So, when we say “Jesus Christ,” we’re saying that Jesus is a King!

When Jesus began his public ministry, he told the people, “The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the good news!” As Jesus died on a cross, the awful weight of all our sins fell on his shoulders. The sentence of death God had pronounced against rebellious sinners struck. And Jesus died. For you and me!

But the story doesn’t end there. Jesus the Crucified is no longer dead. The Bible tells us that he rose from the grave. Jesus’s rising from the grave was God’s way of saying, “What Jesus claimed about who he is and what he came to do is true!”

Our Response

What does God expect us to do with the information that Jesus died in our place so we can be saved from God’s righteous wrath against our sins? He expects us to respond with repentance and faith.

To repent of our sins means to turn away from our rebellion against God. Repentance doesn’t mean we’ll bring an immediate end to our sinning. It does mean, though, that we’ll never again live at peace with our sins.

Not only that, but we also turn to God in faith. Faith is reliance. It’s a promise-founded trust in the risen Jesus to save you from your sins. If God is ever to count us righteous, he’ll have to do it on the basis of someone else’s record, someone who’s qualified to stand in as our substitute. And that’s what happens when a person is saved by Jesus: All our sins are credited to Jesus who took the punishment for them, and the perfect righteousness of Jesus is then credited to us when we place our trust in what he has done for us! That’s what faith means—to rely on Jesus, to trust in him alone to stand in our place and win a righteous verdict from God!

Written By: Greg Gilbert

Source: Crosswalk.com

Give Generously

This week we looked at the good gifts God gives to His children. He is generous and kind. We often zoom through our days without looking up or out and forget to notice all the ways God gave generously to us. It is easy to miss seeing His provisions, but that doesn’t mean that they are not there. They are. Every. Single. Day. If you are His child and you have breath in your lungs, there will be gifts from God you will experience each day.

What if each day for the next week we choose to take one minute and list off the various things God gave to us that day? Start small. God gave me life and breath today. God gave me food today. God gave me the birds chirping outside today. Then see how many you can come up with in that one minute. You may be tempted to keep going. Gratitude is contagious and tends to cause a snowball effect. After you have listed off the gifts from God, sincerely thank Him. It will bring Him joy to hear your thanksgiving and praise, and it will refresh your soul.

As a final way to remember the generosity of God, we want to encourage each of you to find one time this week to be generous with someone else. We are attaching a Give Generously Card from Foundations with Janet. This Card serves as a simple way to bless someone with a small gift and tell them of the greatest gift all in one. God is a good gift giver, so we want to follow suit. He will transform us one gift at a time.

Written By: Elizabeth Keith

Childlike Faith

To have faith like a child is to blindly trust the goodness, care, leadership, and provision of a father. Jesus continually called his disciples to a lifestyle of surrender and trust in him, but never so simply as in Mark 10:13-16. Scripture says,

And they were bringing children to him that he might touch them, and the disciples rebuked them. But when Jesus saw it, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.” And he took them in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands on them.

Mark 10 teaches that it’s in having childlike faith that we will receive the kingdom of God. Childlike faith is what fills us with the unshakable hope that we will one day dwell in heaven with our Father for all of eternity. As Christians, we’ve placed all our hope in the truth that Jesus came, died, and rose again, and that if we place our trust in him we will have a resurrection like his. We succeed in having childlike faith when it comes to salvation, but often we fail in placing our trust in our heavenly Father on a daily basis.

Being the child of God affords us the opportunity to live under his constant provision and leadership. As our good Father, he longs to provide for us a wonderfully abundant life full of joy, peace, purpose, laughter, friends, and unconditional love. But so often we go our own way and live our lives apart from all that’s available to us in God. Whether it be by a lack of revelation, impatience, fear, wrong teaching, or past experiences, we so often fail to have faith that God will shepherd us to his perfect plans.

God is calling you to a greater lifestyle of childlike faith. He is calling you to place your trust in him alone for your finances, relationships, future, past, and present. Hebrews 11:6 says, “And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.” What brings our Father pleasure is unadulterated, unveiled, and glorious relationship with his children. He longs for us to draw near to him with full assurance that he is good, real, and that he longs to bless us.

Take time in guided prayer to place your full trust in your heavenly Father. Confess to him any ways in which you have been living in your own strength. Ask him to show you the root of your lack of faith. And receive his help in pursuing a lifestyle of childlike faith. May you experience the transcendent peace and joy that only comes through living by faith.

Source: Crosswalk.com